All Views Articles for 2008-archive-2008
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Tom Engelhardt Hard Times without Studs On Sunday, I went to a memorial for Studs Terkel, that human dynamo, our nation's greatest listener and talker, the one person I just couldn't imagine dying. After all, the man wrote his classic oral... Read more |
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Michael Honey Human Rights and The Economy Crisis Sixty years ago this week, the United Nations adopted he Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It codified liberties Americans had long supported: freedom of speech, assembly, association, belief... Read more |
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Stephanie Mencimer Will the Obama Administration Defend Karl Rove? When the new Congress returns to Washington next month, one of the first items of business for Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee may be to subpoena Karl Rove . The move will put the new... Read more |
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Frida Berrigan Mumbai Wake-up Call A few months ago, trucks loaded with goods crossed a border. All over the world, this kind of thing happens every day, but not here. October marked the first time in 60 years that Indian trucks... Read more |
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Chris Hayes The Pragmatist In case you haven't heard, Barack Obama is a pragmatist. Everybody agrees on this. Read more |
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John Nichols Labor Victory in Chicago When Barack Obama revealed after the election that he was reading a book on Franklin Roosevelt's first 100 days as president, the "new New Deal" discussion went into overdrive. Progressives dared to... Read more |
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Rose Ann DeMoro Obama and Daschle Should Opt for Single-Payer Barack Obama needs to make good on his campaign pledge to reform health care. It is not enough to throw the issue off to former Senator Tom Daschle, Obama's choice to head the Department of Health... Read more |
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Dean Baker If G.M. Was a Canadian Company It Wouldn't Be Asking for Help The Detroit automakers have made many mistaken business decisions that have been important factors contributing to their current crisis. However, they are not responsible for some of the factors that... Read more |
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Bonnie Raitt The Time Is Now for a Green Revolution At the very top of our lawmakers' agenda for change, should be moving the U.S. toward a clean energy economy that transcends fossil fuels and nuclear power. Generating electricity from renewable... Read more |
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Diane Farsetta The 2008 Falsies Awards: In Memory of the First Casualty There's nothing quite like a hotly contested election. The candidates have their devoted supporters and angry detractors. Then there are vigorous debates over the issues, while some people question... Read more |
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Jennifer Daskal Chaos in The 9/11 Courtroom When alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-defendants entered the Guantánamo Bay courtroom Monday, they came armed with a plan to martyr themselves at the hands of a tainted... Read more |
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Amy Goodman Sweden Wrestles with Its Own Future STOCKHOLM, Sweden - The days are short here in Stockholm, which is so far north that winter daylight is limited to about four hours a day. But the city is buzzing with visitors, media and activities... Read more |
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Tony Clarke Toronto Stood Up to Bottled Water Industry Toronto's decision last week to ban the sale and distribution of bottled water on city premises was a watershed moment for water justice advocates the world over. What was truly significant about... Read more |
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Seumas Milne Britain Leaves Iraq in Shame. The US Won't Go So Quietly Obama was elected on the back of revulsion at Bush's war, but greater pressure will be needed to force a full withdrawal Read more |
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Shirin Shirin Economic Woes? Look to Kerala In his 2005 book The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman joined a chorus of economists who touted India as the latest development success story, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. While India... Read more |
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Glenn Greenwald Top Democrat Urges "Continuity" for CIA, DNI and Interrogation Policies I'm actually relieved that traveling burdens leave me with little time to write much about this story ; then again, it essentially speaks for itself and requires minimal commentary (h/t Mad Dogs ): Read more |
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Nicholas D. Kristof Obama’s ‘Secretary of Food’? As Barack Obama ponders whom to pick as agriculture secretary, he should reframe the question. What he needs is actually a bold reformer in a position renamed "secretary of food." A Department of... Read more |
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Dedrick Muhammad Post Racial Racism in the Post As we come closer to the "post-racial age" of a Barack Obama presidency, I am intrigued to find that post-racial racism is already being propagated in the pages of the Washington Post. In "An... Read more |
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Greg Palast Obama's "Way-to-Go, Brownie!" Moment? Has Barack Obama forgotten, "Way-to-go, Brownie"? Michael Brown was that guy from the Arabian Horse Association appointed by George Bush to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Brownie, not... Read more |
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Ray McGovern Will Obama Buy Torture-Lite? You've got to hand it to them. Torture aficionados at the White House and CIA have conned key congressional leaders into insisting not only that torture-lite would be a swell idea, but advocating... Read more |
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Max Obuszewski Who Else Is Spying on Me? On July 16, after returning to Baltimore from a status hearing in Superior Court of the District of Columbia, I received a call from the American Civil Liberties Union that the Maryland State Police... Read more |
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Pat LaMarche Cruelest Lies Often Told in Silence Today is a pretty important anniversary. Sixty years ago the world's self-proclaimed civilized countries got together and signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Rumored to be the most-... Read more |
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Mary Robinson Climate Change is an Issue of Human Rights These principles must be put at the heart of any deal on global warming Read more |
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Nomi Prins A $15 Billion Jumpstart for the Big Three? After digesting an abysmal November unemployment report , House Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is a "car czar" away from working out the kinks for a $15 billion auto Hail Mary, less than half the... Read more |
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Joseph Nevins In Age of Migration, Human Rights Declaration Falls Short Sixty years ago today the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as "a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations." Since its birth on Dec. 10,... Read more |
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Dave Lindorff Workers of America: Wake Up! We All Need a Union! We workers of America, white collar, pink collar, blue collar, and no collar at all, have just gotten a wonderful example of the power of having a union. It¹s an example that should have every... Read more |
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John Nichols Governor Gone Wild: Blagojevich Busted Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, a scandal-plagued Democrat who among other things was preparing to appoint a senatorial successor to President-elect Barack Obama, was arrested Tuesday by FBI... Read more |
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Dean Baker Obama's Medicine for The Economy With US unemployment soaring, spending on infrastructure and other projects is just what the doctor ordered Read more |
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Ira Chernus The First Hundred Days or the Last Hundred Days? Obama's Rendezvous with Destiny -- and Ours Read more |
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Sumayyah Waheed Human Rights Violations in Our Own Backyard Dec. 10 marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As we call on our global leaders to renew our commitments to universal justice and dignity, Californians must examine... Read more |
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Harlan Baker Where Are All The Socialists? Here, There and Everywhere A recent column by Greg Kesich asked where the socialists are (" Looking for socialists in all the wrong places ," Oct. 29). During the recent election, the specter of socialism in its creeping form... Read more |
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Blair Bobier Instant Runoff Voting Such an electoral system saves time and money, and ensures a majority winner Read more |
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Blair Bobier Instant Runoff Voting Such an electoral system saves time and money, and ensures a majority winner. Read more |
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Joseph Stiglitz Capitalist Fools Behind the debate over remaking U.S. financial policy will be a debate over who’s to blame. It’s crucial to get the history right, writes a Nobel-laureate economist, identifying five key mistakes—under Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II—and one national delusion. Read more |
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Sean Gonsalves This Is Our Mainstreet Here At Greater Grace Temple in Detroit this Sunday, Pentecostal Bishop Charles H. Ellis III stood at the altar surrounded by three shiny SUVs. He concluded his sermon, leading the congregation in singing... Read more |
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Scott Boehm On Human Rights, Spain is Different In the 1960s, Spain launched a campaign to entice tourists to Spain via the slogan "Spain is Different!" But while the phrase was intended to elicit exotic images of bullfights and siestas, it... Read more |
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Glenn Greenwald Gen. Hayden and The Claimed Irrelevance of Presidential Appointments Since when did people start believing that high-level appointments and Cabinet secretaries were irrelevant? Read more |
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Peter Dreier Chicago Factory Sit-In: A Symbol of What's Wrong and What's Needed Since Friday, 240 members of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), a small but feisty union that has always been in the progressive wing of the labor movement, have... Read more |
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Shaun Waterman Costs of War: Silent Suffering The last time the US embarked on a major war in the Middle East, in 1990, the legacy included a generation of veterans who were victims of Gulf War Syndrome, and who had to wage a long fight against... Read more |
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Eugene Robinson A Whitewash for Blackwater? The federal manslaughter indictment of five Blackwater Worldwide security guards in the horrific massacre of more than a dozen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad may look like an exercise in accountability,... Read more |
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Marcia G. Yerman Speak Up for Human Rights - The Price of Silence is Much Too High With Barack Obama poised to take office in January 2009, one of the major lessons his candidacy has offered is that movements are built from individuals taking action. In an effort to rally attention... Read more |
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Tim Karr Obama's Broadband Roadmap In a Saturday morning YouTube address, President-elect Barack Obama gave the nation a first glimpse at his administration's stimulus plan - and connecting everyone to the Internet was a main route on... Read more |
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George Monbiot, George Monbiot Cyberspace Has Buried Its Head in a Cesspit of Climate Change Gibberish The Stansted protesters get it. The politicians of Poznan don't quite. But online, planted deniers drive a blinkered fiction Read more |
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Daniel Bradlow Charting a Progressive International Financial Agenda The international financial crisis has shaken the self-confidence of the managers of the international financial system. Their frantic efforts to prop up the global financial system and stimulate... Read more |
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Jeremy Scahill Justice, of a Sort, for Blackwater For 1,929 days, the Bush administration's mercenary force of choice, Blackwater Worldwide, has operated on a US government contract in Iraq in a climate that has wed immunity with impunity. Today the... Read more |
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Michael Kagan Refugees and Obama's American Values When President-elect Barack Obama announced his foreign policy team on Dec. 1, he listed four "American values" that his government will pursue: "Democracy and justice; opportunity and unyielding... Read more |
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Jameel Jaffer and Ben Wizner Don't Replace The Old Guantánamo with a New One On Monday, the circus known as "Guantánamo justice" devolved once again into chaos, with alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed raising the possibility that he and other prisoners once held... Read more |
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James K. Galbraith Stimulus Is For Suckers President Barack Obama (how sweet those words) has already transformed American politics. The GOP is in crack-up. Obama's coattails in Congress give him leverage, and his vast public support gives... Read more |
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Derrick Z. Jackson Burger King's Greasy Campaign When European germs wiped out Indians, at least that aspect of conquest was unintentional. Burger King has no such excuse. Read more |
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Robert Naiman Kinzer: Surge Diplomacy, Not Troops, in Afghanistan USA Today reports that Gen. McKiernan - top U.S. commander in Afghanistan - "has asked the Pentagon for more than 20,000 soldiers, Marines and airmen" to augment U.S. forces. McKiernan says U.S... Read more |
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Benjamin Dangl Workers Occupy Chicago Factory: Echoes of Argentina's 2001 Worker Uprising When the 250 workers at the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago were told that the plant was shutting down, they decided to take matters into their own hands. On Friday, December 5, the... Read more |
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Julia Marton-Lefèvre and Nikita Lopoukhine Managing Our Investment in Nature While economists are developing solutions to the economic crisis, they are not considering investment, at least so far, in the values of nature. Nature's provision of clean water, pollination, food... Read more |
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Andy Worthington Obama and Holder Must Return to a September 10th Mind-Set During the election campaign, one of the sticks with which John McCain’s team attempted to beat Barack Obama was a claim that he was soft on terrorism, or, as Senator McCain’s national security... Read more |
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Norman Solomon The Silent Winter of Escalation Sunday morning, before dawn, I read in the New York Times that "the Pentagon is planning to add more than 20,000 troops to Afghanistan" within the next 18 months -- "raising American force levels to... Read more |
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Ewa Jasiewicz, Ramzi Kysia Free Gaza: A 'Cool Idea' That Should Be Put Into Practice An Open Letter to Israeli Government Spokesman Read more |
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Danny Schechter Donald Trump Blames Crisis on Divine Intervention As the Job Losses Mount, the Government’s Bailout Flouders/Fails Read more |
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Tom Engelhardt The Imperial Transition: 44, The Prequel Did you know that the IBM Center for the Business of Government hosts a "Presidential Transition" blog ; that the Council on Foreign Relations has its own "Transition Blog : The New Administration";... Read more |
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Diane Farsetta An Officer and a Conflicted Man: McCaffrey, the Pentagon and Fleishman-Hillard What will it take, for the Defense Department officials involved to be held responsible for an illegal government propaganda campaign ? Why don't news professionals realize that they need to vet... Read more |
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John Nichols Making a New New Deal: Sitdown Strike in Chicago Much has been made about the prospect that Barack Obama's presidency might, due to economic necessity and the president-elect's interventionist inclinations, be a reprise of the New Deal era. Read more |
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Richard Graves Which Path Will the Youth Climate Movement Take? The world is halfway through the process to create a global climate treaty to respond to Global Warming. In the halls around me, government, NGO, and UN negotiators are painstakingly working through... Read more |
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Barry Nolan 'He Kept Us Safe' - Unless You Count the Dead People After attending a cheery little GOP Christmas party, and in the charitable spirit of the season, Wall Street Journal columnist and Republican stalwart Peggy Noonan reflected on the Bush years Friday... Read more |
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Harvey Wasserman John 'Nuke Bailout' Bryson Must NOT Be Secretary of Energy Among the names on the apparent short list for Barack Obama's all-important choice as Secretary of Energy is that of John Bryson, former head of Southern California Edison. As the embodiment of... Read more |
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Larry Beinhart The Fall of a Free Market Prophet The most interesting, and perhaps the most important, moment in philosophy in the last decade occurred on October 28, 2008, in a hearing of the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Congressman Henry... Read more |
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Matthew Bolton Ban These Pernicious Weapons Obama must reverse US policy and sign the convention against cluster munitions Read more |
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Sarah van Gelder The Obama Economic Stimulus -- Will It Take Us Where We Need to Go? Dear President-elect Obama, The economic stimulus package you laid out today in your weekly radio and internet address is a great starting point -- very much needed as the downward spiral of the... Read more |
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Christopher Brauchli Lies and Deception George Bush Style He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual. - Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr Read more |
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Marcus Raskin and Robert Spero A Toast to President-Elect Barack Obama and the American People: We're Going to Need It! Taking a Hard Look at the Metaphoric Glass You know you are in a perilous period in American history when the optimist and pessimist no longer vie with each other but eerily agree that the glass is... Read more |
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Jim Goodman Food Is Different Food is an important part of most holiday celebrations, not just because we need food to live, but because food connects us to our culture, our past and, whether we know it or not, our future. "Food... Read more |
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Bruce Friedrich 'Yes We Can' Create a Sane Food Policy in the US Two extensive reports released in April indicate that our current method of devising food policy is broken and that the current system is doing tremendous harm in many areas, including those that are... Read more |
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Robert Fisk Whenever I'm in Tajikistan, My Mobile Phone Says I'm in Dubai Just look how we’ve forgotten the CIA’s secret prisons in Afghanistan Read more |
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Karen AbuZayd Action, Not Words The noble spirit of the universal declaration of human rights is betrayed by a lack of help for Gaza Read more |
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Channapha Khamvongsa Drawing the Future From the Past The bombing was relentless. From 1964 to 1973, the United States dropped more than 2 million tons of ordnance on Laos. That's a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years... Read more |
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Marjorie Cohn Obama: Ratify the Women’s Convention Soon Nearly 30 years after President Jimmy Carter signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the United States remains the only democracy that refuses... Read more |
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Najlaa Al-Nashi and David Smith-Ferri Hope, Change, and the Iraq Displacement Crisis Barack Obama, elected on a platform that promised "change," is in meetings with his transition team, weighing decisions about cabinet posts and administration assignments. As media analysts feed... Read more |
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Burt Cohen Our Biggest Problem Is Bigness Far too much of America's energy is being drained today in frenzied attempts to prop up bigness. The housing crisis, the financial meltdown, the teetering of the Big Three automakers. Exalted... Read more |
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Daphne Wysham Paying Our Climate Debt So we've heard the inconvenient truth: climate change is a really big problem, and we need to get serious about it. But what we haven't heard much about is the cost and who will ensure that bill is... Read more |
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Tani Bellestri Blood in the Machine I have spent the past hour typing and deleting, typing and deleting, struggling like mad to find the right words to begin this piece. We are lost, people. We are so very, very lost. We go further... Read more |
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Peter Erlinder Applying the Rule of Law to All Heads of State During the run-up to the 2008 Presidential election, legal developments not directly related to the historic McCain-Palin/Obama-Biden contest got little attention. Now that the election is over,... Read more |
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Hazel Weiser Let the Walls Speak: Collecting the Stories From the War on Terror When I hear arguments against holding Bush administration officials accountable for authorizing the use of torture and "enhanced interrogation" techniques on men and women rounded up in the ill-... Read more |
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Nat Hentoff Obama's First 100 Days After ending American torture, will we prosecute those who ordered other war crimes? Read more |
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Jeremy Scahill Obama Doesn't Plan to End the Iraq Occupation The New York Times is reporting about an "apparent evolution" in president-elect Barack Obama's thinking on Iraq, citing his recent statements about his plan to keep a "residual force" in the country... Read more |
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Jesse Hagopian 'I'm Changing the School's Name to Chrysler' I am going down to Washington, D.C. to ask for a handout. My industry is falling on hard times and needs at least $34 billion to cover basic operating costs—but I assure you the emergency aid isn't... Read more |
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Michael Winship Obama's Familiar Orbit I keep thinking about that tool bag. You know -- the one that the astronaut accidentally let loose while she was repairing the International Space Station last month. Now it's in orbit, more than 200... Read more |
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Anand Gopal Who Are the Taliban? The Afghan War Deciphered Read more |
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Thomas Frank Health-Care Reform Could Kill the GOP Can policy be both wise and aggressively partisan? Ask any Republican worth his salt and the answer will be an unequivocal yes. Ask a Democrat of the respectable Beltway variety and he will twist... Read more |
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Michael Ratner Obama Should Prosecute Bush Officials Who Designed Torture Policy One of Barack Obama's first acts as president should be to instruct his attorney general to appoint an independent prosecutor to initiate a criminal investigation of former Bush Administration... Read more |
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Priyamvada Gopal Comparing Mumbai to 9/11 Diminishes Both Tragedies We must not let '9/11' become a horrific status symbol signalling arrival into the fraternity of wounded superpowers Read more |
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Amy Goodman Chevron in the White House President-elect Barack Obama introduced his principal national security Cabinet selections to the world Monday and left no doubt that he intends to start his administration on a war footing. Perhaps... Read more |
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Donna Smith Will We Be Honest in Our Healthcare Reform Effort? I finally heard an honest soul speaking about the healthcare reform efforts thundering ahead in advance of President-elect Obama's inauguration. And that's a big step in the right direction. Read more |
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Robert C. Koehler Redefining 'Realism' The war regroups. What if Barack Obama, as he pursues his pragmatic strategy that so far seems to be 10 parts "reassurance" (to the defense and financial establishment) to one part "change," is... Read more |
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David Williamson Financial Crisis Could Herald a Renaissance of Radical Thought The detonation of the banking sector brought about by the credit crunch has been tantamount to a revolution. But the greatest transformations in society may come if voters refuse to allow politicians... Read more |
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Glenn Greenwald Why Do Feinstein and Wyden Sound Much Different on the Torture Issue Now? Time constraints prevented me yesterday from writing about Dianne Feinstein's comments concerning torture in yesterday's New York Times , in which the California Senator -- who will replace Jay... Read more |
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Mark Brenner and Jane Slaughter Cutting Wages Won't Solve Detroit 3's Crisis In the 1980s, Chevrolet proclaimed itself the "Heartbeat of America," but today the American auto industry barely registers a pulse. As Washington considers Detroit's plea for life support, the only... Read more |
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Jerome Grossman Can Obama Do Change? Immediately after his election, President-elect Barack Obama was properly deferential to George W. Bush and the U.S. Constitution: "We have only one president at a time." However, it has not worked... Read more |
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Cyril Mychalejko Dealing With Killers and Kidnappers: The High Cost of Free Trade President Bush is using his final days in office to push through a free trade agreement with Colombia that would reward one of the hemisphere's worst human rights abusers. Read more |
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Eugene Jarecki Keeping Track of Change (It Takes More Than Hope) History selected one man to oversee critical points in the defeat of the United States Armed Forces by two nations in Southwestern Asia. And in the short term, the ever obsequious American media... Read more |
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Pat LaMarche New Brand of Eager Holiday Shoppers Just in case you are keeping track, I thought you’d like to know the score. Number of people killed on U.S. soil in 2008 terrorist attacks: zero. Number killed by holiday shoppers this past Friday:... Read more |
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Scott Ritter For Bush - and Obama - a Gut Check George Bush 's candid interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson has one moment of awful truth - when the president, asked if he'd have gone to war had he known there were no weapons of mass destruction... Read more |
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Michael T. Klare '2025' Report: A World of Resource Strife A new report by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) on the emerging strategic landscape, "Global Trends 2025," has attracted worldwide attention because it forecasts a future environment in which... Read more |
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Leonard Pitts Jr. Our Destructive Love of Stuff I like stuff as much as the next guy. My closet is stuffed with stuff, my shelves groan with stuff, boxes full of stuff jam my garage. I like stuff just fine. But I would not kill for it. Read more |